10 Things You Might Not Know About The Monkees

9. The Script for the Monkees Movie ‘Head’ Was Written by Jack Nicholson

In early 1968, many people were sick and tired of the manufactured image of the Monkees, none more than the band members themselves, along with producers Rafelson and Schneider.

The producers were friends with a then-relatively-unknown but very charismatic actor named Jack Nicholson, and they decided to skip town for a weekend with the Monkees to discuss a movie project, bringing with them a tape recorder and a lot of recreational drugs.

Everybody agreed that they had no interest in simply making a “movie” version of a regular Monkees episode; they wanted to experiment and deconstruct the Monkees image.

So they spent a few days riffing on ideas, talking into the tape recorder, and detailing all the things they wanted to say in the film. They really wanted to subvert their image, as well as the manufactured nature of mainstream art itself. And thus began one of the weirdest career suicide attempts in the history of show business.

Jack took the tapes home, and wrote the screenplay for ‘Head’. Bob Rafelson directed the film. The end result was a bizarre “head” movie, surreal and incoherent, yet strangely compelling.

Even stranger than the film itself was the marketing. To begin with, the stars of ‘Head’ were the Monkees (thus alienating the “sophisticated” art and music crowds they were trying to appeal to), the film was rated R (thus alienating many avid young Monkee fans who couldn’t get in to see it), and some of the ads barely even mentioned the Monkees.

A bizarre trailer was created that simply focused in on a man’s head, and another ad consisted of the word ‘head’ being spoken over and over (thus alienating everybody who had not already previously been alienated).

The film was a massive bomb, virtually disappearing from theaters overnight. Made with a budget of $790,000, it earned just $16,111 in its original theatrical run.

The Monkees tv series itself was soon canceled, and the group’s popularity began to rapidly decline over the next couple of years until they eventually disbanded.

As the years went by, however, ‘Head’ began to establish a following, and eventually became a cult classic.

The film is at times maddening and brilliant and begins with the Monkees attempting to commit suicide. It gets darker from there. If you like the Monkees.

10. Monkeemania Returns … in 1975?

Most people know that the Monkees were hugely popular in the late 1960’s and that they experienced a massive resurgence in 1986 when MTV aired a Monkees Marathon. They showed every episode of the tv show back to back, leading to the second coming of Monkeemania.

Fewer people are aware, however, that something similar (albeit on a much smaller scale) had happened several times before.

Typically, the show would start airing in a particular country, the Monkees popularity would rise, and there would suddenly be a demand for some new Monkee business. In fact, calls for a reunion began shortly after they first broke up. The most interesting example of this phenomenon occurred in 1975.

In 1965, songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (aka Boyce & Hart) caught the ear of Rafelson & Schneider and became part of the Monkees musical team.

They wrote the theme song for the tv series (‘Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees’), along with a bunch of other classic Monkees songs (‘Last Train to Clarksville’, ‘(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone, ‘I Wanna Be Free’, ‘Valleri’, and ‘Words’, among others).

After leaving the Monkees project, Boyce & Hart began focusing on their own musical career, releasing several hit singles including ‘I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight’, which reached #8 on the charts.

In 1975, the Monkees were gaining popularity due to syndicated episodes of the show airing in the United States and Japan. An idea was hatched, and a group was formed.

Nesmith and Tork declined offers to join the group (although Tork did join the band onstage for a show in 1976), so Dolenz and Jones teamed up with Boyce & Hart to create an old-school supergroup.

Legally prevented from calling themselves the Monkees, Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart toured America, Japan and Thailand from 1975-77, billing the show as The Guys Who Sang ‘Em and The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em.

They even released a self-titled album in 1976. A live album was recorded in Japan, though it wasn’t released until the 1990’s.

Credits: guitarspotting

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